English

Noun

A synagogue (from Greek: ,
transliterated
synagogē, "assembly"; beit knesset, "house of assembly"; or beit
tefila, "house of prayer", shul; , esnoga) is a Jewish house of prayer.
Synagogues usually have a large hall for prayer (the main
sanctuary), smaller rooms for study and sometimes a social hall and
offices. Some have a separate room for Torah study,
called the Beit midrash
— ("House of Study").

Origins

Before the destruction of the Second
Temple in 70 CE, communal prayers centered around the korbanot ("sacrificial
offerings") brought by the kohanim ("priests")
in the Holy
Temple. The all-day Yom Kippur
service, in fact, was an event in which the congregation both
observed the movements of the kohen gadol ("the high priest") as he
offered the day's sacrifices and prayed for his success.

The destruction of Solomon's
Temple, and later the Second Temple, and the dispersion of the
Jews into the Jewish
diaspora, threatened the nation's focus and unity. At the time
of the Babylonian
captivity the Men of the
Great Assembly began the process of formalizing and
standardizing Jewish services and prayers that would not depend on
the functioning of the Temple in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yohanan
ben Zakkai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple
era, promulgated the idea of creating individual houses of worship
in whatever locale Jews found themselves. This contributed to the
saving of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a
portable way of worship, according to many historians. Under
Orthodox
Jewish law whenever any group of ten men comes together, they form
a minyan, and are
eligible to conduct public prayer services—usually, but not
necessarily, in a synagogue. Note that a synagogue is not in the
strictest sense a temple; it does not replace the true, long since
destroyed, Solomon's Temple. A synagogue is not necessary for
collective worship.

In Eastern
Europe synagogues were established by like-minded groups of
people. Such a synagogue was known as a kloiz, and was often delineated by
the professions of its worshippers: e.g. "the tailors' kloiz," the
"water-carriers' kloiz," etc. One kloiz that still bears that name
today is the Breslov
kloiz built by Nathan of
Breslov in the city of Uman,
Ukraine in 1834. Today, this kloiz has been supplanted by a
"new kloiz" built to accommodate the thousands of worshippers at
the annual Breslover
Rosh Hashana kibbutz (prayer gathering).

Architectural design

There is no set blueprint for
synagogues and the architectural shapes as well as interior designs
of synagogues vary greatly. In fact, the influence of other local
religious buildings can often be seen.

Historically, synagogues were built in the
prevailing architectural style of their time and place. Thus, the
synagogue in Kaifeng, China loooked very like Chinese temples of
that region and era, with its outer wall and open garden in which
several buildings weere arranged. The styles of the earliest
synagogues resembled the temples of other sects of the eastern
Roman Empire. The surviving synagogues of medieval Spain are
embellished with mudejar plasterwork. The surviving medieval
synagogues in Budapest and Prague are typical Gothic
structures.

The emancipation of Jews in European countries
not only enabled Jews to enter fields of enterprise from which they
were formerly barred, but gave them the right to build synagogues
without needing special permissions, synagogue architecture
blossomed. Large Jewish communities wished to show not only their
wealth but also their newly acquired status as citizens by
constructing magnificent synagogues. These were built across Europe
and in the United States in all of the historicist or revival
styles then in fashion. Thus there were Neoclassical,
Neo-Byzantine,
Romanesque
RevivalMoorish
Revival, Gothic
Revival and even Egyptian
Revival synagogues. Some synagogues used the swastika
as a decorative element, usually without religious significance,
before it took on sinister connotations in twentieth-century
Nazi
Germany.

In the post-war era, synagogue architecture
abandoned historicist styles for modernism. Most synagogues were
always modest buildings using the inexpensive vernacular
architecture of their era and region, and most still are.

The ark in a synagogue is positioned in such a
way that those who face it, face towards Jerusalem. Thus,
sanctuary seating plans in the Western world generally face
east, while
those east of Israel face west. Sanctuaries in Israel face towards
Jerusalem. Occasionally synagogues face other directions for
structural reasons; in such cases, some individuals might turn to
face Jerusalem when standing for prayers, but the congregation as a
whole does not.

The ark is reminiscent of the Ark
of the Covenant which contained the tablets with Ten
Commandments. This is the holiest spot in a synagogue,
equivalent to the Holy of
Holies. The ark is often closed with an ornate curtain, the - ,
which hangs outside or inside the ark doors.

A large, raised, reader's platform called the () by Ashkenazim
and by Sephardim, where the Torah scroll is read and from where the
services are conducted in Sephardi synagogues.

A continually-lit lamp or lantern, usually electric, called the
(), the "Eternal Lamp," used as a reminder of the western lamp of
the menorah
of the Temple
in Jerusalem, which remained miraculously lit
always.

A candelabrum specifically lit during services commemorating
the full Menorah.

A pulpit facing the
congregation for the use of the rabbi, and a pulpit or amud -
(Hebrew for "post" or "column") facing the Ark where the Hazzan
stands while leading the prayer service.

A partition () dividing the men's and women's seating areas, or
a separate women's section located on a balcony.

A synagogue may be decorated with artwork, but in
the Rabbinic and Orthodox tradition, three-dimensional sculptures
and depictions of the human body are not allowed, as these are
considered akin to idolatry.

Synagogue windows are sometimes curved at the top
and squared at the bottom, recalling the popular depiction of the
shape of the Tablets of
Stone which Moses received from
God at Mount Sinai.
There is also a tradition to install twelve windows around the main
sanctuary to recall the Twelve
Tribes of Israel, underscoring the importance of unity and
brotherhood as a result of the communal prayers.

Until the 19th
century, the synagogue interior was laid out with both a
spiritual and a communal focus. In an Ashkenazi
synagogue, all seats faced the (Ark) in which the Torah scrolls
were housed. In a Sephardi
synagogue, seats were arranged around the perimeter of the
sanctuary, but when the worshippers stood up to pray, everyone
faced the Ark. The Torah was read on a reader's table located in
the exact center of each sanctuary, echoing the manner in which the
Children
of Israel stood around Mount Sinai when they received the
Torah. The leader of the prayer service, the , stood at his own
lectern or table, facing the Ark.

Reform synagogues and temples

The German Reform
movement which arose in the early 1800s made many changes to the
traditional look of the synagogue, keeping with its desire to
simultaneously stay Jewish yet be accepted by the host
culture.

In following decades, the central reader's table,
the bimah, was moved to
the front of the Reform sanctuary — previously unheard-of
in Orthodox synagogues. The rabbi now delivered his sermon from the front, much as
the Christianministers
delivered their sermons in a church. The synagogue was renamed a
"temple," to emphasize that the movement no longer looked forward
to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Conservative synagogues

The Conservative movement, which
also developed in Europe and America in the 1800s, rejected Reform
as being too liberal and Orthodoxy as being too outdated. However,
like other varieties of Judaism, its synagogue design is not
consistent. Some Conservative synagogues resemble Reform temples,
complete with organhttp://www.bethyeshurun.org/organ.htm.
Others resemble Orthodox synagogues, but usually without a mechitza, the dividing barrier
between men and women. There are approximately 750 Conservative
synagogues in the United States today.

Reconstructionist synagogues

The Reconstructionist
movement, which arose in America in the latter half of the
20th
century, counts less than 100 synagogues worldwide. In keeping
with a Reconstructionist Jewish spirit of liberalism,
Reconstructionist synagogues are not as traditionalist as
Conservative Judaism in the design of the synagogue and do not use
the mechitza. The
congregation decides communally how much traditional Judaic imagery
and symbols are appropriate. Reconstructionist Jews generally do
not call their houses of worship "temples".

Synagogue as community center

Synagogues often take on a
broader role in modern Jewish communities and may include
additional facilities such as a function hall, kosher kitchen,
religious school, library, day care center and a smaller chapel for
daily services.

Synagogue offshoots

A related place of worship is the (,
pl. or , Yiddish for "little house") that is frequently used by and
preferred by Hasidic
and Haredi
Jews. A may sometimes be a room in the private home of a Hasidic
Rebbe, or a
place of business which is set aside for the express purpose of
prayer. It may or may not offer the communal services of a
synagogue.

Another type of communal prayer group, favored by
some non-Orthodox Jews, is the chabura (חבורה, pl. chaburot,
חבורות), or prayer fellowship. These groups meet at a regular place
and time, usually in a private home. In antiquity, the Pharisees lived
near each other in chaburot and dined together to ensure that none
of the food was unfit for
consumption.

World's largest synagogues

The largest synagogue in the world is the New Beit Midrash of
Ger in Jerusalem,
Israel. The
main sanctuary seats over 8,500.

The second largest synagogue in the world is the
Belz World Center, also in Jerusalem, Israel, whose main
Sanctuary seats 6,000. Construction took 16 years.

Famous synagogues

In Israel and regions of the Jewish
diaspora archaeologists have uncovered many ruins of synagogues
from thousands of years ago. The small ruined synagogue at Masada is one of the
most well-documented; it dates from the time of the Second
Temple. Synagogues have also been discovered in Egypt and on the
island of Delos which predate
the synagogue at Masada.

The oldest active synagogue in Europe is the Alteneushul
(Old-New
Synagogue) in Prague, Czech
Republic, which dates from the 13th century. The Altneushul was
the pulpit of the great Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the Maharal, and his
creation, the golem of
Prague, is rumored to be hidden within the synagogue. During
Kristallnacht
on November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis in Germany and
Austria
destroyed or significantly damaged 1,574 synagogues, which included
many of the greatest synagogues of Europe. Many were also destroyed
or fell into disrepair during the Nazis' conquest of Europe, during
which many Jewish communities were wiped out.

The
Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Recife, Brazil, was the
first Jewish temple erected in the Americas, in 1636. Its foundations
have been recently discovered, and the temple was entirely
recovered. The synagogue appeared during the government of Dutch
John
Maurice of Nassau in Northeastern Brazil and it was built by
Portuguese Jews that came from Europe with him. They used to live
in Holland since they were ordered to leave the kingdoms of
Portugal and Spain by the end of the 15th
century. A few decades after their arrival in Recife, the
Portuguese Inquisition started a new era of persecutions against
Jews, who had to leave again. Those people were among the ones who
founded the city of New Amsterdam, in North America, later called
New
York.

The Bialystoker
Synagogue on New York's Lower East
Side, is located in a landmark building dating from 1826 that was
originally a Methodist Episcopal Church. The building is made of
quarry stone mined locally on Pitt Street, Manhattan. It is an
example of Federalist
architecture. The ceilings and walls are hand-painted with
zodiacfrescos, and the sanctuary is
illuminated by stained glass windows. The bimah and
floor-to-ceiling ark are handcarved.